immediately evident. Before a closed door a sort of wheeled conveyance,
partaking of the nature of a chair and of a perambulator, stood upon
polished rails, which disappeared under the door itself, showing that
the thing was intended to be moved from one room to another in a certain
way and in a fixed line. The rails, had the door been opened, would have
been seen to descend upon the other side by a gentle inclined plane
into the centre of a huge marble basin, and the contrivance thus made
it possible to wheel a person into a bath and out again without
necessitating the slightest effort or change of position in the body. In
the bedroom the windows were arranged so that the light and air could
be regulated to a nicety. The walls were covered with fine basket work,
apparently adapted in panels; but these panels were in reality movable
trays, as it were, forming shallow boxes fitted with closely-woven
wicker covers, and filled with charcoal and other porous substances
intended to absorb the impurities of the air, and thus easily changed
and renewed from time to time. Immediately beneath the ceiling were
placed delicate glass globes of various soft colours, with silken
shades, movable from below by means of brass rods and handles. In the
ceiling itself there were large ventilators, easily regulated as might
be required, and there was a curious arrangement of rails and wheels
from which depended a sort of swing, apparently adapted for moving a
person or a weight to different parts of the room without touching the
floor. In one of the lounges, not far from the window, lay a colossal
old man, wrapped in a loose robe of warm white stuff, and fast asleep.

He was a very old man, so old, indeed, as to make it hard to guess his
age from his face and his hands, the only parts visible as he lay at
rest, the vast body and limbs lying motionless under his garment, as
beneath a heavy white pall. He could not be less than a hundred years
old, but how much older than that he might really be, it was impossible